business intelligence

Data mining's adult challenges

Probably no data-mining legend has been more pervasive than the "beer and diapers" story, which apparently dates back to an early 1990s project that data-warehousing pioneer Teradata (then part of NCR) conducted for the Osco Drug retail chain.

As the story goes, they discovered that beer and diapers frequently appeared together in a shopping basket on certain days; the presumed explanation was that fathers picking up diapers bought a six-pack when they were out anyway. This correlation was then used to optimize displays and pricing in the stores.

That's the story anyway. The reality, as best anyone can determine, … Read more

With Endeca buy, Oracle makes unstructured-data statement

Oracle today acquired Endeca, an unstructured-data software and business intelligence player, for an undisclosed sum.

The deal is notable on many fronts. For starters, Oracle is serious about content management and unstructured data. Hewlett-Packard bought Autonomy with the same market in mind. Endeca was on tap to go public and raised $65 million from various venture firms as well as Oracle rival SAP.

For its part, Oracle plans to take Endeca's technology and combine it with its ATG Commerce offering. Oracle's move gives it Endeca's MDEX engine, which makes sense of unstructured data, Endeca InFront, an e-commerce … Read more

What IBM's Watson tells us about the state of AI

Computers that reliably understand human communications have been a staple of fiction going back decades or more. The Enterprise's computer in the 1960s vintage "Star Trek" series is as good an example as any. And truth is, that particular science-fictional ability probably would not have seemed all that remarkable to the typical person of the time.

Access billions of pages of text, pictures, and video from a gadget I can fit in my pocket? Play a game with immersive graphics on a huge, high-resolution screen that hangs on the wall? For a computer engineer, the fact that … Read more

Looking for the blind side in a complex world

I spend a fair bit of my working life meeting with people, listening to their plans for their next product, project, strategy, initiative, or campaign. My job? Review, evaluate, and give feedback. It's great when I can confirm they've got things right. Check! Good! Yep! Oh, yeah, I like that! I help confirm and build confidence in the plan.

It's a good thing I have the opportunity to be positive, because the larger and more important part of the job is decidedly less affirming: figuring out where they've gone wrong. What's missing? What's vague … Read more

EMC builds new data computing division around Greenplum

EMC has announced it will acquire Greenplum, a data warehousing and business analytics software firm for an undisclosed sum. EMC will use this acquisition to form the basis of a new Data Computing Products Division led by Bill Cook, CEO of Greenplum, who will report to Pat Gelsinger, COO of EMC's Information Infrastructure Products. To put that statement into perspective, Backup and Recovery Solutions (where Data Domain and other related acquisitions now live) is also a separate EMC division reporting to Gelsinger. BRS is a big division with a lot of products. Therefore, I think one can safely bet … Read more

EcoFactor pings thermostats to save energy

Start-up EcoFactor is looking at home energy management as a big math problem.

The Silicon Valley-based company on Tuesday is formally launching and is announcing that the largest utilty in Texas, Oncor, has signed on with EcoFactor's residential energy-management service for three years.

There are several companies developing Web-based software or displays to show consumers, in more detail than a monthly bill, how much energy they are using.

EcoFactor's software, by contrast, works behind the scenes by gathering data from a two-way thermostat and then analyzing the information to optimize heating and cooling systems, which often account for … Read more

British Telecom picks Jaspersoft for analytics

If you need further proof that open-source applications are ready for prime time, take today's news from open-source business intelligence company Jaspersoft, which announced that British Telecom is using its business intelligence suite to support more than 8 million voice mail subscribers.

BT and Unisys, a longtime Jaspersoft partner, say they chose Jaspersoft for its modular design, which reduces maintenance and cost and gives them customization abilities that improve capacity planning.

The deal with BT also represents how important a solid channel strategy is for open-source software companies.

Jaspersoft CEO Brian Gentile has in the past mentioned that the … Read more

How open source levels all software market segments

In a new study on open-source adoption in the business intelligence (BI) market, it's becoming clear that both the benefits and shortcomings of open source software are nearly universal across all technology segments.

According to the study by Third Nature (sponsored by Jaspersoft and Infobright), "the top reason for adopting is still cost savings, although reduced vendor dependence and ease of integration were close to the same level. The limiting of vendor technology lock‐in and freedom from deployment restrictions were key elements of reducing vendor dependence. Some companies used open source deployments as a means of keeping … Read more

Business Intelligence moves to the cloud

One of the most difficult aspects of cloud computing is dealing with the integration of various applications that run between your enterprise and a cloud provider or data center. Application integration is arguably the biggest challenge to enterprises attempting to adopt cloud principles.

To that end, Jaspersoft, Talend, RightScale, and Vertica have teamed up to offer a joint solution stack that delivers complete Business Intelligence (BI) in the cloud.

Business intelligence has been the No. 1 technology spend for the last three years running, according to reseach firm Gartner. And, despite the the recession, Madan Sheina from Ovum has called BI … Read more